Alright, so I've never really heard a bad word said about Ocarina of Time and although I have fond memories of it, I don't truly understand why people consider it one of the best games ever made.

If it's in your top games of all time, please let me know why you think so. Is it nostalgia? Is it a game mechanic? The music? What makes it so revered?

Thanks guys!

At the time there was really nothing else like it in games. For 1998 standards it was pretty much the perfect translation from a 2D, ALTTP style Zelda game to a 3D space. It also did a lot for games in general, including good lock on targeting in a third person adventure game, as well as a higher standard of cinematic presentation using nice camera angles, effects, and music.

Playing the game now is naturally more difficult, especially if you don't have nostalgia for it. However, despite its age, many people are still able to come to the game and have a blast with it, standing the test of time for a general (if patient) subset of the modern audience.

Nostalgia does play a big role for some individuals though. That game was one of my first video games and to this day even hearing small hints at this game's soundtrack, say, in the BoTW overworld, instantly takes me back to a time and place in my life that was much more carefree and innocent. I probably played the game for hundreds of hours back in the day.

It's not. There is no best game ever. It all depends on the person. It is a very good game, though Majora beats it hands down for me.

I mean, Super Metroid is the best game ever, not Ocarina of Time.

Setting that aside, context! Basically, there was nothing else like Ocarina of time in 1998. 1998 was a pretty great year for "there has never been anything else like this before" - Metal Gear Solid and Half-Life also fall into that category - and Ocarina of Time did open world exploring, questing, solving puzzles, doing 3D dungeons, and so on like no one else had ever really done before. If you were 12 years old and playing Ocarina of Time in 1998, your mind would have been fucking blown.

I have tried to play OoT several times and never actually made it that far in. I played it on a Wii with a Gamecube controller for a little while, then I played the 3DS version several years later for a little while, and then tried to play the 3DS version again after beating the Wii U version of Wind Waker last year. Every time, I've simply found the game boring and clunky. I'd love to enjoy it, I have gone back and played old games before and enjoyed them, but it just doesn't do much for me. Zelda games in general don't do much for me, the only three I've finished are Wind Waker, Breath of the Wild, and A Link Between Worlds and I wouldn't even consider any of them for a "favorite games ever" list.

Nothing, it's not even the best or second best game in its own series. They put a targeting system in a 3D game, no one would've thought to do that ever without Ocarina, targeting never would have existed! EVER! Targeting. Yep.

Ocarina is around like 100th best game ever though, its still good just comically overrated. Now if you want to make the Ocarina argument but instead attach it to Mario 64 then it actually holds water.

Super Metroid/Vagrant Story

It was a good game with a lot of great mechanics that it nailed and had a butt load of content. The music is still great, to boot. Structurally, the game still holds up fairly well even though it looks rough for the most part.

But the nostalgia I think fuels everything people obsess over. This is one of those games that when you were younger you spent all your time into playing because your parents weren't gonna buy you another game until Christmas or your birthday, and the crazy amount of content made up for it. I never played through the whole thing since I was a Playstation kid (which I'm grateful for because MGS was my defining nostalgic game of my youth) but I knew kids that spent all year playing OoT. Those kinds of memories stick with people and rose-tint their memories. It's why people seem to love Super Mario Sunshine.

I'd argue the best game ever hasn't been made yet. There are some close contenders obviously, but the best hasn't been made yet.

@burncoat: You seem to be weighing eternity Vs ~40 years.

I'll be the outlier and say that I don't think Ocarina is overrated. I played it for the first time in 2010, 12 years after release, and it held up very well. It was my third Zelda game after Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. The time travel elements in Ocarina between young Link and adult Link are still very novel and entertaining, even today. It was a more involved light world/ dark world puzzle system from Link to the Past. Seeing how the environment changed between the two eras, how the characters changed, and trying to solve puzzles using that is still a highlight for me in gaming.

Impact and influence count for a hell of a lot when people discuss "best ________". It's why Citizen Kane is regarded as the Citizen Kane of movies, when it's not actually that amazing a film.

To have it there, I think you kind of had to have experienced this game when it came out. It was huge then. There was a certain "step up" feeling you got from certain games. I felt similarly playing Halo for the first time.

I'm not a big Zelda guy at all really but it's my favorite Zelda because it was a real experience at the time on N64.

You're missing that it's about implementation. Anyone can have any idea to put something in a game, especially when it comes to how a camera works. If it was all about just thinking it then every game would have a great camera. They deserve lots of credit for their execution on targeting at the time.

Mario 64 deserves its credit for 3D camera work too. Other developers tried to do the same thing, they just didn't do it as well.

It was a very good action-adventure game when it came out in 1998. People who played it when they were 8-16 years old are now adults who talk about video games. People exaggerate and pedestalize good things from when they were kids and teenagers. That's all.

Goldeneye 007 is categorically the best game ever

Just don't try playing it now - it doesn't hold up...

Nothing, because it isn't. Revolutionary at the time, wildly outclassed by many many games released since.

immersion. OoT showed me a world I wanted to explore and find out more about. It would be weird to play fro the first time now but on release it blew me away. My single best moment in all gaming was when I got epona and just rode, on paper sounds ridiculous and it probably is but its a special memory and its mine

In my opinion it doesn't hold up well (like most early 3D games on consoles... Mario 64 being the exception). It did many things right at the time and if you've played any Zelda game as a child I'm sure you managed to get completely immersed. My young nephew has played a ton of Breath of the Wild already and I am sure that he will remember the game as the best one he's ever played (and objectively speaking the game has a lot going for it).

nostalgia mainly,though for me it got beat by BOTW for best zelda game

For a lot of people like me, who were console kids and hadn't really played any 3D games up to that point, the simple acts of exploration and combat in 3D space was new and exciting. Z-targeting was huge. The music was incredible. The characters and story were simple but memorable and presented very well. Obviously it's been supplanted by its sequels since then, but that doesn't make it any worse. It's still a fun game to go back to.

When I think about why I love OoT so much the first thing that comes to mind is how I was immersed in that living world. I think of the crows cawing at night, watching the sun move across the sky, the town full of people with something for you to do.

Before that my main video game squeeze was Mario. I had a blast jumping around as that dude, but OoT changed my idea of what games could be. It was the first time a game transported me to a believable world.

I remember playing this game at a friend's house and being completely enthralled by it. Yet, I didn't actually get the game until a year later because A) my family was quite poor and B) eight year old me never knew what the game was called. However, I remember getting the game at an EB gameshop, the cartridge itself was placed in a black box with the game manual in front, sort like those VHS boxes. I had a feeling that this was the game I played before and so desperately wanted to play. It was on discount so my parents got it for me and I was so engrossed into the game when I finally got to play it.

Although I wouldn't consider OoT the best game ever. It is in my top memories as to why I love gaming. Outside of playing World of Warcraft for the first time back in 2006 and having my brother surprise me by getting me a Switch a few weeks ago.

I think it was Jeff Bakalar who said "The best game ever is whatever the most popular game is when you're 9 to 13 years old" and I think that holds true.

To be honest the idea that there's one game that's better than all others is a bit of a paradox. How do you weigh up the accessibility of tetris to the story of Mass Effect 2? "The best games ever" was a concept devised by games journalists to provoke arguments and sell magazines. And it works, because there's no right answer.

Case in point: we're still talking about it right now.

I think - if you were the right age when it came out - it was the sense of wonder and exploration combined with a well thought out combat system. It barely ranks in my top 5 for 1998, and I played it at the time. However, there are a number of games that came out during that era (1997-1998) that rank as some of people's greatest games of all time (Ocarina, Final Fantasy 7, Half-Life, Pokémon) and I think it's just a combination of right time, right age, and a big leap in quality over similar games.

Nothing probably ;)

I think OOT is and still to this day one of the greatest games, for its time but other Legend of Zelda games like Breath of The Wild make the very top of the list for graphics story and gameplay but what does it matter if it has good graphics or not Ocarina of Time is still a great game.

For me at the time there was nothing else to that quality for that style of game. All the improvements in 3D action adventure games can’t go unnoticed because of ocarina of time. But it’s the game itself I really like, the dungeons,the characters, the music, just exploring that world. I have played that game multiple times and enjoyed it every time (maybe not as much as my initial play through) but still felt like I had a great experience.

I agree however I’m sure someone could make an argument for any game being the greatest game of all time. When I think about how much fun I originally had when it first came out The nostalgia definitely carries a lot of weight but nothing has come close to giving me that sense of achievement or for lack of a better word wonder than when I played ocarina of time.

People may say breath of wild is a much better game in that sense, but I do like games with a little bit more structure. I thought breath of the wild was great but no where near as good as ocarina of time, if anything wind waker would be a very close second if I had a favourite Zelda of all time list!

I like that style of game and you still see parts of the game design in today’s games, that’s why people are still saying it’s the greatest of all time. The parts that made it revolutionary for it’s time are still, though a lot more refined, are still being displayed in other games of it’s type.

I thought it was good, but not the GOAT. I would submit that A Link to the Past is hands-down better.

Specifically I remember hating Navi at the time to the point of being strangely indignant about it (in fairness I was 12). I never saw the point. She was obnoxious and she would straight up tell you how to fight a boss. From my perspective I remember thinking you either knew to throw the bomb into the giant dinosaur's mouth - in which case you don't need her - or you didn't - in which case figuring that out is kind of a central part of what makes Zelda games fun.

I also think that the transition to 3D didn't go as something as it did for something like Mario64. Something about the art style of the older games was way more effective at stoking my imagination than a lot of blocky polygons.